Wearable computing devices promise to deliver countless benefits to users. Moreover, they are among the most personal and unique computing devices of all, more so than laptops and tablets and even more so than smartphones. However, this uniqueness also brings with it a risk of security issues not encountered previously in information systems: the potential to not only compromise data, but also to physically harm the wearer. This article considers wearable device security from three perspectives: whether the threat is to the device and/or the individual, the role that the wearable device plays, and how holistic wearable device security strategies can be developed and monitored.

There is no escaping the Big Data hype. Vendors are peddling Big Data solutions; consulting firms employ Big Data specialists; Big Data conferences are aplenty. There is a rush to extract golden nuggets (of insight) from mountains (of data). By focusing merely on the mountain (of Big Data), these adventurers are overlooking the source of the revolution-namely, the many digital data streams (DDSs) that create Big Data-and the opportunity to improve real-time decision making. This article discusses the characteristics of DDSs, describes their common structure, and offers guidelines to enable firms to profit from their untapped potential.

As surveillance technology advances and becomes more data rich and less intrusive and costly, brands collect vast quantities of customer data in order to gain customer insights to remain competitive. Brands conduct customer surveillance often without considering the consequences on customer relationships. Because of customer surveillance activities, customers may also experience privacy intrusions and turn to customer secrecy strategies that hide or disguise their data. To reduce this reaction, we propose a set of surveillance prompts to structure market intelligence databases to increase the efficiency of, and thus reduce the quantity of, customer surveillance activities while increasing data integrity and the potential value of customer insights. By discussing the need for brands to collect business and market intelligence, as well as detailing five types of customer data resources, we lay the groundwork for selecting potential customer data resources that best fit a brand's customer insight needs. We conclude with a discussion of two important considerations of a brand's customer surveillance strategy.

Online customer reviews are an important type of user-generated content, through which consumers share their experiences with products and services in order to help others make informed purchasing decisions. In this article, we discuss the goals of online customer reviews and develop practical, actionable principles that can be used to improve the presentations of customer reviews. We identify four goals-two ultimate, and two intermediate-of online customer reviews. The two ultimate goals are: (1) to assist consumers in making accurate choices, and (2) to reduce the cognitive costs of making such choices. The two intermediate goals are: (1) to help consumers form an unbiased understanding of the product, and (2) to construct a set of evaluative criteria. Drawing on the constructive view of consumer judgment and choice, we present a conceptual model of online-review based consumer judgment and choice. We report principles that will improve the presentation of reviews, and discuss the benefits of the new design over the traditional presentation of online reviews.

Increasingly, customers are expecting more and better service. As such, enterprises need guidelines and frameworks for addressing these expanding requirements. The concept of process completeness helps us to consider service from the customer's viewpoint; arguably, the only perspective to take. Process completeness is achieved when a firm's service delivery system matches the typical customer's breadth of expectations. While customers think in sets of services (e.g., I need a flight, a hotel, airport parking, wireless Internet), firms think in terms of single services (e.g., we can provide a flight). There are four basic service systems: (1) transaction-execute a basic request and nothing else, (2) process-handling all firm related service requests through one touch point, (3) alliance-handling service requests through a single touch point via stitching together a static firm-selected alliance of service partners, and (4) agility-handling service requests through a single touch point via stitching together a dynamic customer-selected alliance of service partners. In addition to exploring the four service systems, this article guides executives regarding the selection and implementation of the appropriate service strategy that meets their typical customer's process completeness expectations.

The advent of superior connectivity and integration technologies is paving the way for flexible electronic partnering options. Such flexibility is essential if a company wants to attract a large number of partners (with varying connectivity needs and preferences) to its supply chain network. This article conceptualizes 12 electronic partnering options. It then discusses the various types of sensemaking and conversion challenges that companies encounter in developing this critical electronic business (e-business) capability and proposes a multi-pronged approach to effectively deal with them. This approach involves four distinct but synergistic campaigns of digitization--strategic congruency, organizational design, technology infrastructure, and relational campaigns. The utility of this approach is illustrated by examples of successful business-to-business (B2B) digitization initiatives.

By allowing consumers to control data about their purchases and preferences, says business and technology professor Richard T. Watson, companies can get a better sense of what their customers want to buy.

Among marketing mix variables, price alone directly affects a firm's revenue. The advent of a new medium for buyer-seller interaction, the Internet, is changing the issue of price for both customers and suppliers in an unprecedented way. On the one hand, there are Internet dynamics that flatten the customer value pyramid (defined by the value of the customer to the firm) because of technology that facilitates customer search, customer control over transactions, the provision of means by which the customer can make rather than take the price, a return to one-on-one negotiation, and commoditization of markets. Countervailing dynamics of the Internet enable the firm in some instances to differentiate pricing all the time, to create customer switching barriers, to "de-menu" pricing, to differentiate on other dimensions of the purchase decision, and to reduce transactions costs. A conceptual model is proposed for identifying Internet-based pricing dynamics and market forms according to the relative strengths of buyer and seller. These dynamics suggest that pricing decisions can be as creative as those made about the development of new products and services or advertising campaigns. Indeed, pricing may be the last frontier for marketing creativity. In the hands of the wise, the Internet might be the digital wagon that carries pricing pioneers to the edge of the digital frontier.

Advocates of the World Wide Web claim it is a great leveler and that participants have a more equal voice. This flatness of the Web creates a major challenge for many businesses: How do you attract visitors and prospective customers to the firm's Web site? The Web site that can attract more visitors, all other things being equal, is more likely to communicate its message to a wider audience or sell its product to more people. Organizations want to build mountains--or "attractors"--in the otherwise flat landscape of Web-based marketing and advertising. This article classifies existing approaches to creating attractors, identifies four basic types of attractors, and predicts that there will be a move toward creating highly interactive attractors as a device for mass customization. The article also addresses the notion of sustainable attractiveness and presents recommendations for designing an attractor.